On February 3, the New Mexico Senate passed SB 6, the omnibus election law bill. Here is a copy. In section 60 of the bill is a provision requiring write-in candidates in the general election to submit a petition signed by 1% of the last vote cast, if they want their write-ins counted. The bill passed unanimously and there has been no publicity about this virtual ban on write-ins.
A 1% of the last votes cast requirement to have write in votes counted is insane. Way too difficult for than. Not reasonable.
Hopefully that gets taken to court and overturned. It’s an obvious violation of people’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
One more 14-2 Amdt violation ???
Some states don’t have write in at all so I don’t see violation being pronounced in court.
For sake of comparison: how many signatures are needed for an independent to get on the ballot?
Now you have to petition just to be a write in candidate?
That’s really perverse.
If the bill becomes law, it might be held to violate the State Constitution, which says that elections must be free and equal. The petition deadline would be in late June of the election year. In 1980 New Mexico voters elected a write-in candidate to the U.S. House, Joseph Skeen. If this bill had been in effect in 1980, the Skeen victory would probably have been impossible.
1% of the last vote cast for U.S. House would be about 4,000 signatures.
Texas has long required write-in candidates to file a declaration of candidacies. This was intended to spare election officials from tabulating votes for Mickey Mouse, TOTSOP, and Lesko Brandon. When the bill was originally proposed, the election judge would have the sole copy of the list to be used when counting votes. A voter would have to request to view the list. The bill was amended to post the list everywhere an instruction poster was poster. An instruction poster is posted in every voting booth. In addition, the environment for mail voting is to be as similar to in-person voting as practicable. This requires the list of write-in candidates to be included on a sheet of paper included in the packet with the ballot paper that is a list of on-ballot candidates. Write-in candidates are treated as regular candidates – they must comply with campaign finance regulations including appointing a campaign treasurer.
Write-in candidates require modification to ballots, and programming of voting machines.
In 1991, write-in candidates were required to pay a filing fee (or submit an in lieu of petition). The dollar amounts and signature requirements were the same as for primary candidates. This might simply have been a matter of convenience to borrow some existing code rather than any rational basis. The election clerks argued that they were having to do just as much effort preparing for write-in candidates as on-ballot candidates. One could imagine what would happen if it became widely known that you could become a write-in candidate for governor or senator simply by filing a sheet of paper (see the Murkowski-Miller election in Alaska). In addition, in Texas, one could file as a write-in candidate for multiple offices. I can file for all 38 US representative seats. If my last name were De La Fuente I might do it, particularly for free. But with a filing fee of $142,500 I might be dissuaded.
Opponents suggested the better solution was to simply limit write-in candidates to one office, and pointed out the bill that would do just that. The write-in filing fee was passed into law. In 1993, the limitation of one office was added.
It was this write-in filing fee that was applied to convention candidates in 2019. There was simply no reason for the SOS to assume it applied to filing in December, when the statute said it applied to nominees (those who had been nominated) and the purpose was to place candidates on the ballot in November.
How many write-in votes in 1860-1867 before 14 Amdt ratified in July 1868 ???
All of them. They didn’t have gov printed ballots.
Just found the info I was looking for on Ballotpedia:
“The petition for an independent candidate for the United States House of Representatives must be signed by at least 3 percent of the total number of votes cast for governor in the previous general election in that particular congressional district.”
ANY ALL WRITE-IN BALLOTS – NOT PRINTED IN 1860-1867 ??? —
SHEET OF BLANK PAPER –
WRITE IN AREA OFFICES AND CANDIDATES
—
OR PRINTED WITH BLANK SPACES FOR EACH OFFICE ???
Yes, they were still all write in not gov printed in 1867 and some years after that.
Darryl, that wikipedia page is out-of-date. It was lowered to 2% in 2019.